


Trains

by Kohnnor



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Autobiography, Feelings, Memoirs, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kohnnor/pseuds/Kohnnor
Summary: This is a brief story about a thing I miss, trains! It's a very personal narrative, but I hope that other people who feel the same way will enjoy this work.
Kudos: 2





	Trains

There are few things I truly love in this world, but seldom do I love an inanimate object: the things I speak of are trains, and it’s one of the things I miss the most, now more than ever. I don’t care about the technical aspect of it, I don’t care about the model or how many tons it has, or how old it is, so long as it’s a train. Shortly before the pandemic, I had not gotten the time or opportunity to ride one as a last temporary goodbye, and it was genuinely one of the few things in life that made me feel at home, and at peace. It relaxed me and I can say without hesitation that I could spend hours upon hours on a train to nowhere, as the destination matters not to me. The journey does.

And there have been many journeys throughout my life, I have countless hours spent in those compartments, either completely alone or packed together with other people. Both have their advantages; the former being the long moment of being by myself in silence, enjoying the scenery of my usual route that I took often: Cluj - Suceava. It has a plethora of mountainous landscapes and amazing window-views of the ever passing beauty of nature. The latter, however, is chaotic, completely opposite; it’s a lottery of souls, where the loser gets the old lady who thinks herself alone, munching on her cured meats as if the train seats are her own table, the man who won’t shut up about politics, the religious zealots who preach for hours on end, the shady characters who make you check your pockets and leave you stuck within your place, afraid to leave your belongings unsupervised in their presence. All these people somehow always end up in the same train, they are the ever-present humans of the train cars who keep their behavior, despite having a different face every time. It’s a lottery because you always end up with just one of them in the small compartment of your car. You never win.

I digress. This is not what makes me long for the journey during these days. It is the oh so graceful rocking of the train, the hum of the engine in the quietness of the night, the rhythmic thump of the wheels running on the tracks; it had become a familiar music that I brought with me home each time I disembarked. I go to sleep after a long ride, and I still feel the bumps in the tracks, I still hear the echoed horns disappearing in the distance, I still smell the dirt and grime of the neglected metal giant. I think of these feelings quite differently depending on the seasons, but mostly winter and summer have made quite the ever-lasting impression on my memory.

Winter train rides are a coin flip - will you suffer long hours of icy winds, or will you be overdressed for the searing heat of the radiators? Seldom will you be comfortable during winter; and it’s as if it always knows when to play tricks on you - have you dressed yourself in thick clothing, preparing for the shivery grasp of snow? The train will warm you up. Surely, since you last rode it, they have heat cranked up to the max, so you under dress yourself, trembling like an icicle on the platform, waiting for minutes on end for the always-late train. Wrong. You’ll be an icicle all ride long - there will be no balance of how to dress during winter, but that’s the journey.

Summer, however, is awful - so awful, I can’t help but to love it. There is no air conditioning in the older trains, and those are the models that you’ll always meet. You will ride one train that has been modernized, but it will always be a “I hope it’s one of those” when you’ll be waiting for it. It never is. The blazing sun shining on the dirty, stained, windows will cook you alive, and no matter what you believe in, it feels like hell itself. Despite that, the warm colors of the summer and the seemingly endless day is something I love, and when the train is quiet, so am I. I plug in my earphones and play some music, hoping that my battery won’t run out; summer trains never seem to have a power outlet. I open a window; the warm breeze is something that I’ll forever want to live for, and the way it caresses my hair is one of the best feelings in the world. I stick my head out from time to time to feel the powerful wind of the train’s speed, playing a sappy song and taking in a moment I’ll always long for. I’ll try to reproduce it, but I only end up making new ones, trapping myself in an endless loop of fleeting fickle memories.

There are also the night-car rides: and I swear they are of another world. No night train ever felt the same to me, even with so many tickets under my belt. If I wasn’t traveling by sleep car, I would get second class. The latter was the dreadful one, but I will come back on it later, as there is more to say than of the sleeper cars. Those are quiet and sterile, there is minimal to no human interaction even if it’s filled to the brim, all beds taken. I don’t have a favorite spot, but I hope that I don’t get the top one during summertime - that one feels like an oven, and if you’re claustrophobic, you’ll become either religious or atheistic, because no deity made a seat that high and said “What if humans slept in tuna cans?” The rest of the seats are like that, but nothing beats staring at a cream ceiling that’s about 30 centimeters far from your face. Watch your head!

The second class night cars are even more hellish - every time I lie to myself that I’ll catch some sleep sitting down, but each time I ignorantly forget about the neon-white lights that are never dimmed, much less shut off. Second class night rides are a guaranteed sleepless night, and if you do manage to catch some shut-eye, you’ll wake up thinking hours passed; reality makes it so it’s always 5 minutes. Your bones hurt and the howling noise of the engine seems to be louder than before, leaving you wondering if it was ever this loud. The train ride always feels double the time announced, and if limbo was real, then it’s these night cars.

It’s okay, though, such is the journey. My ever-moving corner of the world, the dreadful destination that I hope to never arrive at; the last moments of it feel longer than the time I had spent riding so far, even if it was half a day. Even so, the train stations are my home away from home, and they are a temporary fix to this need to go. They ramp up anticipation within me, but they themselves are unique, each station has a flair of its own. I even memorized the announcement the muffled but loud speakers make that inform you of the route of the train and when it arrives. “ _Trenul interregio numărul 1883 din direcția Timișoara va sosi în stație la linia 3… Trenul va opri...”_ and so on.

The station in my hometown, Suceava? It’s beautiful, built during the brief moment in history where the town was under the Habsburg leadership - and as so, the architecture of it is quite unique compared to the rest of Romania. The red brick and decorated windows and rails paint it to be one of the most elegant train stations I’ve seen in my country. Unfortunately, it’s inside pales in comparison to the cover, the building itself is shy in its size, and the usual people haunting it are a wide range of drunks and beggars, all looking at you like prey. It is not a place I enjoy spending too much time at, compared to the station in Cluj.

That one? I could spend hours in it - it’s nothing special in regards to looks, but I’ve always felt safe in it, even with all the usual crowd that’s present in all stations. It’s so bland, I can’t help but ignore it, but that’s what makes it special to me.

I’ve seen plenty of other stations in Romania, but one stood out to me more: the small cabin they call a stop, the one in Eforie Nord. It’s very shabby and old, damaged even, though the view of it was something I’ll never forget - the tracks were right next to the Techirghiol lake, and the smell of the sea was present in the air. Past the tracks, there was untamed wilderness and shrubberies growing as they pleased, and the tracks went between the lake and the sea. It was very quiet, and very magical, even.

Such are a few moments of my life that I hope to never forget. I cherish the good and the bad, and love it unconditionally - for my mom always tells me “the road suits the traveler” when she sees me after so long, and I couldn't agree more. I am a wanderer at soul, and always will be. I always need to go, but I never intend to arrive.

**Author's Note:**

> As a side note, one song that is very dear to me is Trains by Porcupine Tree. It heavily inspired the way I write and the mood of it, so if you want to, check it out!


End file.
